Felix Atagong's Unfinished Projec

Z for Zeitoun

20091205

Z for Zeitoun

It was freezing cold this morning and exactly this week clothing
manufacturer H&M
decided to adorn the railway stations with some lingerie publicity that
made me even shudder harder when I passed the semi-naked fleshy
skeletons that pretended to have a good time. In the name of science I
had a good look at them and decided that two models glued together would
make a normal looking woman with the necessary accessories to put some
lingerie around (and then, as I am – but – a man, take it back off).

Although there is an anti-skinny movement going on for a couple of
decades now the haute-couture and fashion world doesn't seem to be
interested and carries on promoting an anorexic lifestyle. When Photoshop
Disasters published a promotional picture of a model whose picture
had been so maltreated that her hips actually were smaller than her head Ralph
Lauren immediately attacked the blog for copyright infringement and
its internet provider removed the post without even asking if Ralph
Lauren had made a valid point or not (it wasn’t but the image still
hasn’t reappeared nearly 3 months later). The new censorship dictators
no longer carry the title prince, king or emperor they are now called
CEO and lawyers throwing crap
from sad green mountains have become their licensed fools.

Later on Photoshop Disasters published a second
Ralph Lauren publicity, but this time the company didn’t respond anymore
as their previous reaction had backfired,
mainly because other blogs, especially Boing
Boing, newspapers and television stations had jumped in to the
rescue thus creating a so-called Streisand
effect. If you have a couple of hours to spend just do a Google search
and enjoy. It is also rather dubious that Ralph Lauren never found it
necessary to apologize to Photoshop Disasters, nor Boing Boing, but
prefers to send silly press statements to the world about how
misunderstood they are.

Thank god, dog or blog we have democracy and freedom of speech. So we
think, I was a big believer of the nivellement par le bas theory
in my progressive twenties (suddenly the name Habermas
flashes through the mist in my brain) but when the first fat rolls
started to grow on my body that had a reverse proportional effect on my
ideological beliefs as well. Now that I have turned 50 I’m back full of
anger and angst and the future looks as gloomy as when I was 18.

I used to ironically quip how (Bush ruled) United States of America slid
more and more towards the direction of that big fat, but nevertheless
undernourished, ancient enemy of theirs the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics. It isn’t irony anymore.

Both countries basically had a rigid one party system with an infallible
but often slightly demented leader at the top. Both countries used a
‘common enemy’ to enhance nationalistic feelings, anyone opposing or
even debating that issue was considered unpatriotic and measures where
then taken to remove the unpatriotic elements from society. In the USSR
you disappeared in a mental institute or a Gulag archipelago, in the USA
– being a capitalistic driven society – it was mostly enough to sack the
person from his/her job, although there are enough examples of American
citizens that have been imprisoned for ‘unpatriotic’ behavior. I
recently came across Dave
Eggers’s non-fiction book Zeitoun
and it enraged me at a point that I had to take physical distance from
the novel from time to time.

The book meticulously describes how Abdulrahman
Zeitoun, an American citizen, stays behind after the hurricane Katrina
disaster, peddling with his canoe through the inundated streets and
helping citizens who didn’t or couldn’t flee the city and who were
eagerly waiting for official help organizations that would never arrive,
as if the USA was one of those third-world countries who can’t look
after their people after a tragedy.

As a devout Muslim Abdulrahman finds it his task to help wherever he
can, but one day he gets arrested, in true Mad Max style by
self-appointed police officers, and deported to a nearby prison camp.

Zeitoun is put in an iron cage (!) that ASPCA
would find unsatisfactory for animal transport and is accused of
terrorist activities. How on Earth an Al
Qaeda terrorist would plot satanic plans, peddling in a canoe, by
helping old ladies from the roofs of their inundated houses, remains a
mystery, but from then on the story, although it is not a story - but
hallucinatory fact, gets Kafkaesque proportions. Zeitoun literally
disappears from Earth, is refused a lawyer, his family is not informed
of his imprisonment and they are led to believe he has drowned trying to
protect his property. If this had happened in the USSR we’d call it
Stalinist and rightly so.

Zeitoun, falsely accused, repeatedly insulted, (verbally) abused,
emotionally and physically tortured, was not the only citizen doing Katrina
time says Dave Eggers, and all-in-all Abdulrahman was still quite
lucky:

There were hundreds of people that did months in jail, and I'm sure
there are dozens of cases of prisoners who did over a year in various
jails and prisons around Louisiana, where no one even knew where they
were. It's unprecedented in American history, (…) I think there was a
dark age, right in the middle there, from 2003 to 2006 especially, when
anything seemed possible and nothing was surprising. (Taken from: Salon)

Zeitoun’s unnecessary persecution didn’t turn him onto a Muslim
terrorist; quite the contrary. He seems to see the whole episode as a
weird test and has forgiven his persecutors. He tries to persuade
himself and his entourage that the whole process has strengthened him as
a religious individual and as an American citizen who, as everybody
else, watches Pride and Prejudice with his family. While a droopy
dog-eyed George Bush was firing one-liners to television cameras around
the world Abdulrahman Zeitoun saved over two-hundred New Orleans
citizens trapped by the water. The American government rewarded him by
putting him in a dog cage and by refusing him the most elementary human
rights, including medicial treatment for his wounds.